Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452013-02-23T12:06:42-05:00TypePadNo Man's Land (2001)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017c370d2331970b2013-02-23T12:06:42-05:002013-02-23T12:06:42-05:00**½/**** starring Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis written and directed by Danis Tanovic by Walter Chaw Chiki (Branko Djuric) is one of two surviving members of a front-line relief party that was decimated after their guide got them lost in a fog. (From the first, the visual metaphors fly as thick as pea soup.) His companion Cera (Filip Sovagovic), thought dead by the enemy, has been placed on a pressure-sensitive mine; his antagonist, Nino (Rene Bitorajac), has been disarmed and wounded. The three of them (four if you consider the mine a character) decry their causes while overlooking their similarities. No Man's Land is at its best when it tantalizes with the possibility for resolution--and at its worst when it explodes the claustrophobia of its first hour to include the UN, the press, and a newsreel montage lending background to a conflict the movie's only ostensibly about in the first place. Far more Joseph Heller than Costa-Gavras, Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land plays less like a political exposé of the Bosnian/Serb conflict than like an absurdist tragicomedy. No Man's Land's setting, an eight-foot trench in the pessimistic crossfire of violent hostilities, is clearly evocative of Samuel Beckett's...Bill Chambers